Uncertainties in estimating mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in China

Abstract. A detailed multiple-year inventory of mercury emissions from anthropogenic activities in China has been developed. Coal combustion and nonferrous metals production continue to be the two leading mercury sources in China, together contributing ~80% of total mercury emissions. However, many uncertainties still remain in our knowledge of primary anthropogenic releases of mercury to the atmosphere in China. In situations involving large uncertainties, our previous mercury emission inventory that used a deterministic approach could produce results that might not be a true reflection of reality; and in such cases stochastic simulations incorporating uncertainties need to be performed. Within our inventory, a new comprehensive sub-module for estimation of mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in China is constructed as an uncertainty case study. The new sub-module integrates up-to-date information regarding mercury content in coal by province, coal washing and cleaning, coal consumption by province, mercury removal efficiencies by control technology or technology combinations, etc. Based on these detailed data, probability-based distribution functions are built into the sub-module to address the uncertainties of these key parameters. The sub-module incorporates Monte Carlo simulations to take into account the probability distributions of key input parameters and produce the mercury emission results in the form of a statistical distribution. For example, the best estimate for total mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in China in 2003 is 90.5 Mg, with the uncertainty range from 57.1 Mg (P10) to 154.6 Mg (P90); and the best estimate for elemental mercury emissions is 43.0 Mg, with the uncertainty range from 25.6 Mg (P10) to 75.7 Mg (P90). The results further indicate that the majority of the uncertainty in mercury emission estimation comes from two factors: mercury content of coal and mercury removal efficiency.

[1]  Chen Lei,et al.  Mercury transformation across particulate control devices in six power plants of China: The co-effect of chlorine and ash composition , 2007 .

[2]  A. Takami,et al.  Export of atmospheric mercury from Asia , 2005 .

[3]  Y. Yi-chun.  Mercury in Coal of China , 2002 .

[4]  Ruhai Liu,et al.  Atmospheric particulate mercury in Changchun City, China , 2001 .

[5]  D. Jacob,et al.  Chemical cycling and deposition of atmospheric mercury : Global constraints from observations , 2007 .

[6]  Michael Q. Wang,et al.  An inventory of gaseous and primary aerosol emissions in Asia in the year 2000 , 2003 .

[7]  A. Ryaboshapko,et al.  MODELLING OF MERCURY HEMISPHERIC TRANSPORT AND DEPOSITIONS , 2002 .

[8]  Jiming Hao,et al.  Anthropogenic mercury emissions in China , 2005 .

[9]  Jiming Hao,et al.  Mercury emission and speciation of coal-fired power plants in China , 2009 .

[10]  Jozef M. Pacyna,et al.  Global Emission of Mercury from Anthropogenic Sources in 1995 , 2002 .

[11]  Jingkun Jiang,et al.  Trends in anthropogenic mercury emissions in China from 1995 to 2003. , 2006, Environmental science & technology.

[12]  Xuchang Xu,et al.  Mercury emissions from six coal-fired power plants in China , 2008 .

[13]  Michael Wang,et al.  Well-to-Wheels Analysis of Advanced Fuel/Vehicle Systems — A North American Study of Energy Use, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Criteria Pollutant Emissions , 2005 .

[14]  W. Schroeder,et al.  Vertical distribution of gaseous elemental mercury in Canada , 2003 .

[15]  R. Shia,et al.  Multiscale modeling of the atmospheric fate and transport of mercury , 2001 .

[16]  Simon Wilson,et al.  Global anthropogenic mercury emission inventory for 2000 , 2006 .

[17]  Xinbin Feng,et al.  Mercury Pollution in China — An Overview , 2005 .

[18]  D. Jaffe,et al.  Quantifying Asian and biomass burning sources of mercury using the Hg/CO ratio in pollution plumes observed at the Mount Bachelor observatory , 2007 .

[19]  A. Flegal,et al.  Mercury concentrations in coastal California precipitation: Evidence of local and trans‐Pacific fluxes of mercury to North America , 2002 .

[20]  Hongjie Zhang,et al.  Atmospheric gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) concentrations and mercury depositions at a high-altitude mountain peak in south China , 2010 .

[21]  Wei Zheng,et al.  Atmospheric mercury in Changbai Mountain area, northeastern China I. The seasonal distribution pattern of total gaseous mercury and its potential sources. , 2009, Environmental research.

[22]  G. Carmichael,et al.  Biomass burning in Asia: Annual and seasonal estimates and atmospheric emissions , 2003 .

[23]  Jiming Hao,et al.  Mercury emissions from coal combustion in China , 2009 .

[24]  Zhonggen Li,et al.  Temporal and spatial distributions of total gaseous mercury concentrations in ambient air in a mountainous area in southwestern China: implications for industrial and domestic mercury emissions in remote areas in China. , 2009, The Science of the total environment.

[25]  Urmila M. Diwekar,et al.  New stochastic simulation capability applied to the GREET model , 2008 .

[26]  Xinbin Feng,et al.  Seasonal variation of gaseous mercury exchange rate between air and water surface over Baihua reservoir, Guizhou, China , 2004 .

[27]  MA Zhuang-wei,et al.  The estimation of mercury emission from coal combustion in China. , 2000 .

[28]  A. Dastoor,et al.  Global circulation of atmospheric mercury: a modelling study , 2004 .

[29]  Ravi K Srivastava,et al.  Control of mercury emissions from coal-fired electric utility boilers. , 2006, Environmental science & technology.

[30]  F. Nadim,et al.  Atmospheric mercury monitoring survey in Beijing, China. , 2002, Chemosphere.

[31]  Zhu Zhen.  Research on Characteristics of Mercury Distribution in Combustion Products for A 300MW Pulverized Coal Fired Boiler , 2002 .

[32]  O. Lindqvist,et al.  Occurrence, Emissions and Deposition of Mercury during Coal Combustion in the Province Guizhou, China , 2002 .

[33]  Wei Zheng,et al.  Temporal variation of total gaseous mercury in the air of Guiyang, China , 2004 .

[34]  Nicola Pirrone,et al.  A Synthesis of Progress and Uncertainties in Attributing the Sources of Mercury in Deposition , 2007, Ambio.

[35]  Youhua Tang,et al.  Regional distribution and emissions of mercury in east Asia: A modeling analysis of Asian Pacific Regional Aerosol Characterization Experiment (ACE-Asia) observations , 2006 .

[36]  G. Carmichael,et al.  Mercury in the atmosphere around Japan, Korea, and China as observed during the 2001 ACE‐Asia field campaign: Measurements, distributions, sources, and implications , 2004 .

[37]  Prakash Karamchandani,et al.  Global source attribution for mercury deposition in the United States. , 2004, Environmental science & technology.

[38]  Shuxiao Wang,et al.  Synergistic Mercury Removal by Conventional Pollutant Control Strategies for Coal-Fired Power Plants in China , 2010, Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association.

[39]  Oliver Lindqvist,et al.  Total gaseous mercury in the atmosphere of Guiyang, PR China. , 2003, The Science of the total environment.